a photo of my living room, with a window surrounded by books on bookshelves, a green velvet couch, a pink table cloth, a toy kitchen, a box of leggos.

A THURSDAY MORNING DEVOTED TO AWE IN MY LIVING ROOM IN SAN FRANCISCO

This is an invitation for you to come to my house in San Francisco Thursday morning June 26 from 10am to 12pm. We’ll arrive in silence and find our seats in my living room. I will offer a guided meditation. It’s also a quiet performance. It’s also a dharma talk kind of thing. It’s me reading and saying something to help you and myself remember our awe at existence. That will last about 20 minutes. Then we’ll have a little time to journal, to see what arises, what we want to take with us. Then we’ll have a little time to talk in a group, if you feel moved to speak. Then we’ll close the meditation circle part and (this might be my favorite part) I’ll serve delicious tea and some also delicious snacks I will have prepared for you.

I don’t want to meet online right now. I want to meet in person. I want to make you snacks and tea, I want to use my voice to say things that might buoy you. I want to be in silence in the same room with you and then hear your thoughts if you have any to share. For those of you dear ones who are not in sf, I will eventually make this thing I am offering into a recording, which is not the same, but it’s something, in case you are wanting to come too.

The price is $33, but if this is a problem for you, hit me up. There are 10 spots for this event. Please bring a cushion or a camp chair if you like. We’ll have a couch and some chairs and floor space for you to choose from. The space we’ll be in, my living room and kitchen, is up a flight of stairs. My home is pink, and it’s in the outer sunset, a block from the N Judah. Parking during that time shouldn’t be too hard, but I recommend arriving 15 minutes early to find parking. I’ll send you the exact address once you get your ticket.

I realize a Thursday morning is a time a lot of people might not be able to come. But it’s the time my house is not full of other people, so let’s try! Let’s have a tiny magic experience in San Francisco together!

This is something I wrote last fall for another in person event that can give you a sense of the kind of thing I’ll be sharing.

A Few Notes Towards Awe

This is an invitation to consider this piece of paper, who it might be from. Which specific eucalyptus. Which exact pine. What ways they were shaped into these particular cellulose fibers. What color was the soil, that the roots of this eucalyptus pushed into, which oceans was the soil between. Which birds and bacteria landed on and took flight from its branches, made it home. This pine that is now a home for the contemplation of its own life cycle, this mixed-media, mixed-species, mixed-labor conglomerate called paper you are holding.

This is an invitation to consider where is this ink is from, who harvested which flax plant on what morning in which August. Which synthetic resins were put together with the oil squeezed from the flax seeds, and who instructed a computer to instruct a machine to pour them into their cartridges, and who sat at at desk drenching their eyes with blue light, to design how and where the ink reached the paper. Who stood on the factory line (while wearing polymers that we now call clothing) to assemble the pieces of plastic into the household item called printer. Who left their family for two months at a time to keep the printer in its cardboard box, in its plastic wrap on the pallet, in its shipping container on its cargo ship as it traveled from China to this US of A. Who drove the forklift to move this printer from the shipping container to the truck, and who drove it to Best Buy. Who spent their days under the specific florescent lights on the ceiling in the Best Buy on Geary street, for how many years, before they carried this printer from the shelf to the cash register for me. The printer which formed this ink into the shapes of letters, which make these words, on this paper you’re holding.

This is an invitation to consider which marigold protected which tomatoes from aphids so that you ate it in the form of sauce on your pizza last night, or some other night, countless nights marigolds supported your sustenance. This is an invitation to consider this specific gravity, which is keeping your singular body tethered to this exact concrete foundation, resting on top of a specific intermingling of previous and current species of animals and stars now called land. A specific intermingling of previous and current species of animals and stars is often, lately, also, called your body.

I invite you to consider how someone put on your socks, and opened your pop tart wrapper, and made the sounds of your language to you, before you could, and another specific someone did those things for me. Which now means we are breathing during this moment of our adulthood. We can now wonder at, and perhaps at times lament, the purpose of such a thing as an adulthood. We can also look at any object in any direction and instantly astound ourselves again with the most cursory attempt to trace its circular journey backwards. For now let’s count, (more often and more together) all the ways you belong to the generous congealment of land-body called world. And then count backwards toward all the ways world belongs to the generous congealment of land-body called us.